Human Security Launches Dan Kaminsky Fellowship

Human Security has established the Dan Kaminsky Fellowship in honor of its late co-founder and chief scientist.

Security industry leader and innovator Dan Kaminsky passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. He worked on nearly every aspect of security, including network security, cryptography, Web security, and ad-fraud prevention with the co-founding of Human (formerly White Ops). His most well-known research was the discovery of a massive DNS vulnerability in 2008, after which Kaminsky helped drive a collaborative patching effort and later presented his findings.

The Dan Kaminsky Fellowship will be awarded to the human (or humans) "who epitomizes benevolent internet innovation," Human writes in a release. In honor of its namesake, the Fellow's open source project "will touch on a problem that, if solved, will improve people's lives on the internet."

Human is offering Fellows a year of full-time employment to dedicate to working on their project. In addition to the same employment benefits as Human's full-time employees, they will be given an adviser to report to who will help them navigate resources within the company.

The fellowship will culminate with a presentation during at least one of the major security conferences, such as Black Hat, DEF CON, and RSA Conference, said Tamer Hassan, co-founder and CEO of Human Security.

"Dan wasn't just a great builder; he was also a great presenter," Hassan said in a statement. "Sharing and presenting, and preparing our Fellows to do so at their best, will be a major piece of this Fellowship."

Applications for the Dan Kaminsky Fellowship opened on Aug. 2, 2021, and will close on Oct. 1, 2021.

Read more about the fellowship and application process here.